Tim Robbins: I've thrown out my TV

Oscar winning actor Tim Robbins says he has got rid of his television because
it was making him aggressive.

Actor Tim RobbinsPhoto: EPA

8:52AM BST 03 Apr 2012

Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbinssays his experience directing a play based on George Orwell's1984 has prompted a life choice as personal as it is political: He's living without a TV.

"I have done an experiment for the past three years: I got rid of my television. One of the things Orwell talks about in the book '1984' is this thing called 'the two-minute hate,'" Robbins said in a press conference in Bogota.

"People go in front of their television screens and they yell at the person they object to politically. I realised I had been doing that for two hours every day during (the administration of George W.) Bush. I said, 'I've got to stop hating.'"

Robbins' Actors Gang production of "1984" is among nearly 200 works being performed during this year's biennial IberoAmerican Theater Festival in Bogota.

The production was adapted by Michael Gene Sullivan from Orwell's 1948 dystopian novel about a totalitarian society where surveillance is pervasive, language is a weapon of suppression and TVs are used to spy on people.